Health Cares

Folks that normally avoid me like the plague when news from Washington is heating up, now seek to sit and talk, often with the loud and angry words they usually reserve for Republicans.

Earlier this year I wrote a column about the perception that Democrats truly care about people while Republicans are unfeeling slugs who are content to see others starve while they happily count their money. Putting this idea over on the public is something the left does very, very well; or I should say, has done well in the past. It seems that recently they are having a little perception problem of their own: namely, the idea that when it comes to healthcare, they are careless indeed.

I was of the number of conservatives who wished the Affordable Care Act to be delayed as long as possible, while others, including my husband, counseled that the best remedy for Obamacare would be Obamacare itself; that once the biggest takeover of private industry in our nation’s history began to crawl out of its shell, its weight, complexity and downright unworkability would become apparent to all. And boy, were they right. The ACA has been an even worse disaster than even the GOP had predicted.

Because now, at least in my little corner of New England, never has the ineptitude of big government been the subject of more impassioned discussion. To say that the emperor has no clothes would be a gross understatement. Folks that normally avoid me like the plague when news from Washington is heating up, now seek to sit and talk, often with the loud and angry words they usually reserve for Republicans. And amazingly, once we’ve finished with the absurdity that is Obamacare, they are more willing than ever to own up to the reasons why our local and state governments are dysfunctional. They are putting two and two together and for the first time in years, they’re getting the right answer: Democrats.

And they are not alone. There are many others who have been seduced by the snake oil salesman but now feel the fangs of the snake in their own flesh; and they are not happy. They are like jilted lovers whose main complaint is not so much that they miss or pine for the affections of those who abandoned them; but ache with the realization that they have been duped and discarded after investing so much love and sacrifice.

It goes without saying that if Democrats really cared about the quality and affordability of our healthcare, they might have invested a few weeks in reading the thousands of pages of the bill, rather than passing it to see what was in it. No, if they really cared about the biggest problem with America’s healthcare, the outlandish costs of medical procedures, they would have given more consideration to President George W. Bush’s tort reform efforts, which would not only have reduced the huge malpractice premiums for doctors, but reduced the often unnecessary tests or, “defensive medicine” which is necessarily practiced throughout our medically litigious ‘healthcare’ industry. They would do well to study what a decade of tort reform has wrought in Texas.

The truth is that socialists don’t really care. Indeed, it’s astonishing to hear the President of the United States—a man who has seen fit to degrade the integrity of his office by opining about a case involving a single black youth in Florida before it went to trial—pooh-pooh the fact that his duplicitous rhetoric ONLY affects 5 percent of the population; a mere 15 million Americans, although many predict much higher numbers. And even this shibboleth is deceitful: that only a small percentage of Americans will have to suffer. No, the true message from this debacle—and we can only pray that the media does its job in reporting it—is that every taxpaying American will shoulder the burden, as they are hit with a plethora of new taxes, reduced deduction limits and penalties. Even non-taxpayers will feel the pain when prices inevitably rise, as businesses pass on the new costs of healthcare to consumers.

Then there was the president’s bogus ‘apology’. Of the millions losing their plans he said, “I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.” His use of the words “sorry that” instead of “sorry for” demonstrate that he has no intention of acknowledging culpability. It’s like me saying I’m sorry that people are out of work in America: I am sorry, but, unlike Barack Obama, it’s not my fault.

What it all comes down to is that Obamacare is graphically demonstrating how and why socialism is untenable when it comes to driving an economic engine. Folks across America are slowly starting to understand why most of Europe has collapsed under the rule of its socialist masters, and more importantly, how it could happen here. It could just be that Obamacare will be the nail in the coffin of the American socialist experiment; let’s just hope the GOP can find the right folks to hammer it home.